


The party

by Cicuta_virosa



Series: The bird and the wizard [2]
Category: DCU (Comics), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crossover Pairings, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-07
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-23 23:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17693021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cicuta_virosa/pseuds/Cicuta_virosa
Summary: It's been six months and Dick is the only cop of Blüdhaven who remembers the strange english cops





	1. Chapter 1

Wayne Manor was shining with a thousand lights that night, as the Wayne Foundation raised funds against leprosy. 

Dick had come, of course, because it was ridiculous such a disease still affected more than 200,000 person each year in the world. They had satellites and spaceships ! 

The party was in full swing and Dick was dancing with the old Altgravine von and zu Wappenbuch. He liked the old lady : seventy-seven years old and she was a better dance partner than women fifty-years her junior, she never tried to grope him as some old harpies do, and she was one of the most generous contributors of the Martha Wayne’s foundation, even if Dick knew for a fact her family money was more memories than anything else, centuries of war, too many heirs and a few great-uncles with a taste of cards having taking care of drying the accounts. 

So, he was dancing with a old lady and discussing if Damian should or not learn german, because she thought yes, and Dick thought even a smart kid couldn’t pick all the languages and he thought korean would be a best choice. She thought it was too difficult for a third language and he couldn’t exactly tell her that Damian didn’t spoke only arabic and english, like his official bio said, but also Vlax Romani, Spanish and Hausa. Damian also knew a lot of swear words in latin, but it was Jason’s fault. 

So, Dick was dancing, smiling, and speaking about language families and the wonder of grammar, when he saw  _ him _ and, for the first time ever, missed a step and put his foot on the poor woman’s shoe.

Here. 

In the Manor. 

Just here, next to the dance floor, was a man he hadn’t seen in six months. 

Neville Longbottom looked at him, right in the eyes, then he turned and disappeared in the garden by one of the open french windows. 

Dick swore, and it wasn’t in latin. 

“Dick?” 

He didn’t answer her question, only offered a smile and a joke and immediately corrected their trajectory, his mind burning with questions. 

He had never told anyone about what he had seen that night, six months ago. About the magic and the spells flying and the smell of death. About Dean Thomas and Neville Longbottom, who certainly weren’t the english cops they were supposed to be, even if Dick knew a policeman when he saw one, and would have sworn they were some sort of….About Neville and their four nights, and the strange scars on his body, his strange ideas and his bafflement. 

The next day, nobody had remembered them and Dick had said nothing, because he had no desire to see his memory erased too. Sometimes, when the nights were too long and the world too dark, he thought about Neville and the last time he had seen him, unconscious and white as a sheet in Dean Thomas’s arms, and Dick had hoped the other man had lived. 

He let the Altgravine at the second it wouldn’t be rude to do it, and he rushed into the garden. The wizard should have waited. He was the one who had come !

Dick stopped brusquely. 

If it was to erase his memories ? If Neville was there to scramble his brain? He was two seconds from leaving the garden and finding Bruce, when, suddenly, sitting on a bench and his head between his hands, Neville was there. Dick made no noise when he walked, he was sure of it, but Neville raised his head and looked directly at him. 

Then he had a shy smile, and the fear left Dick.

 


	2. Chapter 2

  
  


Neville stood up when Dick joined him. The wizard looked so much better than the last time and some mother hen instinct in Dick quieted. 

“I see your colleague was right when he swore you would live.”

Neville nodded and answered: 

“I probably wouldn’t have if you hadn’t started breathing for me, for the time Dean needed to throw off the residual magic.”

“That’s a good partner you have here.”

“I know. And he knows it too. Officially, I’m with him right now, helping him paint his kitchen, if someone ask one day where I was tonight.”

“Yes, a good partner.” 

Dick had a small, depreciative laugh and continued: 

“To be honest, I had almost started to believe you were a dream I had. Magic, mysterious lover and no trace the next morning.”

Neville bit his lips, breaking the eyes contact, and Dick realized with a small pinch in the chest that he had forgotten this mannerism, this almost shyness. Six months were long, with only the memories of a four nights together. 

“I’m sorry your colleagues memories had to be modified,” Neville said, “Believe me when I said it wasn’t my choices. Our...our people have rules about secret, about our own existence in fact, but I swear, this is a well-documented, easy spell. No side effect, no risk. It’s totally safe.”

There was a noise, people coming from the Manor, laughing and drunk, and Dick moved deeper into the garden, his hand closing, perhaps too hard, around Neville’s arm. The englishman followed without protesting, their path only lit by the moon, full and beautiful in the clear sky. 

“You knew that all the cops working on the case would be-”

“-Obliviated-”, Neville offered.

“- and still you slept with me. If I hadn’t seen you and Dean, that night, if I hadn’t been…” Dick’s voice had risen more than he had intention too. He had tried to not think about that, during those six months, but it had festered in some dark parts of his brain. A one-night stand was one thing, but a one-night-stand, or well, a one-week-stand, knowing your partner would be forced to forget? 

“Yes, you would have forgotten me too,” Neville said, his voice low, “and that’s why, I had no intention...I’m not in the habits...Dick, that’s wrong what I did. If you hadn’t been Nigh-”

“-Shh!-”

“-Sorry, if you hadn’t been there that night, you would have forgotten taking me to your bed. I knew it, I still was weak and a bloody idiot, you were funny, charming, so smart, and I didn’t have -” He stopped brutally, started again, calmer 

“That’s why I came tonight. I wanted to take advantage of the party and the crowd to see you discreetly. I’m deeply sorry, and I want to apologize for my acts.”

And Dick suddenly realized he wasn’t angry anymore. Yes, perhaps Neville was lying. Perhaps the englishman was in the habits to go home with people who would be forced to forget, but Dick didn’t think the man he had learned to know a little during the investigation was that sort of man. And Dick remembered how he had been the one to ask the other man for a drink, how he was the one to have made the first step at the bar. 

Neville had been hesitating, clearly interested and clearly sure it was a terrible idea, and Dick had thought it was because they were working together. 

Now, in hindsights, Neville hadn’t wanted to go home with him because Dick would forget at the end of the mission. 

A laugh escaped Dick’s lips.

“In a way, it’s very flattering.”

Neville arched an eyebrow and Dick added: 

“I really was irresistible, eh?” And to his delight, the Englishman smiled, amused, and ducked his head. He had done the same thing in the bar and, like six months ago, it made heat simmer in Dick’s belly. He wanted to bite that mouth and to see Neville’s eyes better than half hidden by his eyes lashes, stupidly long for a man. 

“Is Neville even your real name?” He asked instead and Neville gave a bow: 

“Neville Franck Nicodemus Drubicius Longbottom, at your service.”

“Drubicius, really?”

“He was my maternal grandfather. I’m quite happy they chose Neville as my first name, to be honest.”

“It’s very ...wizardy.”

Neville grimaced: 

“I’m quite wizardy, as you say. I know you found me strange during the case, like a lot. And I know perfectly well what Dean is in the habits to say in those case. That I was raised in a cult. I suppose the wizarding society is very different from your world. Even if your vision of the world is quite more colorful than for a lot of people.” He smiled to Dick, something sad in his eyes and continued

“I will keep your secret, like you kept mine.”

Dick’s throat closed. It sounded like a  _ goodbye _ . More than that, it sounded like a farewell.  Suddenly, it seemed unfair, impossible, that he would never again see that strange man that was baffled by computers and hesitated before entering a car. He touched Neville’s arm again, like he had done to be sure the other would follow him deeper into the garden, but it was this time, more gentle. 

“How long can you stay tonight?” He asked, and it was a terrible idea, it was like leaping from a gargoyle, from the highest building in Gotham, and only after asking himself where to throw his line. 

But the truth was that Dick had never known when it would be wisest to not take the leap. 


	3. Chapter 3

They had let the curtains open and the first sun of the morning was slowly progressing across the floor. Exhaustion was weighing heavily on Dick’s body and mind, but he couldn’t stand the idea to let it take him to sleep. All night, they had been so careful with the time slipping between their fingers. That moment felt like a reprieve they hadn’t deserved and it couldn’t be wasted with sleep. It had been a time for pleasure, not anything athletic, just the slow, easy, tenderness of what should have been, like they could put in one night all the gentleness of lovers knowing each other for all their lives. There had been whispering questions and answers against the skin between the slow glide of their bodies, trying to learn everything before the dawn. 

Dick had kissed the long scars of whipping on his lover’s back, and Neville had murmured: “It was during a magical war,” and then Neville had worshipped the curved mark of a hunting knife on Dick’s leg and Dick had whispered, “It was my brother, Jason.” There had been shock on Neville’s face and he had retraced the scar again, his fingers strangely calloused and so gentle.He had went down all the way on Dick’s leg, kissing slowly his way down until he reached down the ankle and the scars surrounding it. 

“It was a trap, from a mercenary called Sloane. I almost lost my foot,” and Neville’s fingers had been so gentle Dick had arched against him, discovering how sensitive the skin could be there. Later, he would discover that the slight pain that never left his foot on rainy days had totally disappeared.

Dick had retraced the marks on Neville’s cheeks and the wizard had shrugged and said: “It was at the end of the war. A dark mage put my head on fire,” and Dick had leaned down and kissed the marks like he could erase them, and asked 

“ How did you survive that?” 

And Neville had answered: 

“I took a magic sword from a magic hat and killed a seventh of his soul.”

The wizard had giggled lightly in seeing Dick’s expression and rolled over the acrobat, and the serie of questions and answers had been forgotten for kisses and caresses and for the warmth of their two bodies. They were fighters and it didn’t only show in the scars but also in the muscles. Dick was fascinated by their differences: his was the body of an acrobat, made for bending, for flight, and Neville was more solid in the shoulders, less defined but probably not less lethal,just  built for a different sort of fight.

“I’m vexed,” Dick had said, later. He was stretched out against Neville again and the wizard answered lazily “Hmm?” without stopping the open-mouth kisses he was offering to Dick’s shoulder. 

“My radar cop is broken, I was sure you were some sort of wizardy cop.”

“I have no idea what a radar is, but I am what my world has approaching the more of the idea of a cop. It’s called an Auror.”

“But, the war, you said? Aren’t you a soldier?”

“No, never. I was a member of an underground resistance movement.”

“How old were you? The scars are old as fuck.”

“Fifteen, at the beginning.How old were you when you became Robin?”

“Too young, in retrospect.”

“Why did you start?”

“Because Gotham is at war, too. And once you start….”

“You can never go back, because every peaceful moment is bought with the idea that somewhere, someone is in danger that you could help.”

“Yes.... Kiss me again. Just for this night, kiss me again, like you could stay, and stop being an Auror, and like I was smart enough to left the mask behind.”

Now, Dick was watching the sun nibbling a little more of the floor every minute, his head pillowed on Neville’s belly. The other man was stroking his hair with gentles, careful strokes. 

When the sun touched the end of the bed, Neville had exhaled slowly, a careful sound, like he was trying for strength and extricated himself. Dick let him go, put his head on a pillow to watch him dress slowly. He hoped wizards healed as slowly regular humans, he hoped Neville would think of him for the few days needed for the bruises Dick had sucked on his hips to disappear. Even in his tux again, Neville looked rumpled,his lips redder, his entire being betraying what had happened and Dick fought against the desire to lure him between the sheets again, to sleep all day and pretend the sun hadn’t made an appearance. 

The wizard leaned down on him for a last kiss and nudged something into Dick’s hand. 

“Break it,” Neville whispered against his mouth, “I know Nightwing had fought and defeated humans and aliens and I don’t know what else, and I know you have allies, but if one day, you need a wizard…. Break it, and I will come.”

The Englishman closed the door silently behind him, and only then Dick opened his hand. It was some sort of sphere, big like a golf ball, heavy for its size, and warm. It felt like stone, despite the warmth, and on the white surface, an stylized orange bird was painted. 


End file.
